


A Pulse

by seasalticecream32



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Soulhate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalticecream32/pseuds/seasalticecream32
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul m/hate. (Canon AU- soul m/hate where your heartbeat harmonizes with your soul partners.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pulse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veritably_mad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritably_mad/gifts).



> This and other stuff I've written can be found on my tumblr @ captainmerlin32. Also, this was inspired by aithuzah (veritably_mad)'s answer to an ask about whether they preferred "soul mate or soul hate" fic tropes.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Please comment. :)

Merlin and Morgana meet and it is love at first sight. They meet across the dining hall. Merlin’s whispering to Gwen when his eyes connect to Morgana’s and whatever he’s saying gets lost.

She can feel their heartbeats, thumping together. And they both know what it means. Well, sort of. In a way. Merlin doesn’t think there’s any way he could ever hate Morgana, could ever hate this woman who smiled across the room at him, even as some Knight kissed her hand. She was beautiful, but Gwen said she was also kind.

He doesn’t think he could ever hate her, but he’s not so sure about her ever hating him. She’s Uther’s Ward, after all. And if Uther or anyone ever knew about Merlin’s magic, they’d hate him for sure. Hate him enough for the pyre. So he turns away and he fumbles with the water jug and he glances at her occasionally through the night. And his heart is thumping, in a rhythm he’s not used to, two sounds separate but the same pulsing in his ears.

He tries to put it out of his mind. Sometimes, at night, he gets worried, because his heart will speed so fast he’s sure he’ll fall apart and he knows it’s because of her. One night, as it’s happening, he lights a lantern and climbs from his bed. He edges along the wall and towards her chambers, wanting to make sure she’s ok. His heart is thudding against his rib-cage, too loud and too fast for his pace. He’s convinced there’s something wrong and it must be on her end.

When he reaches her, he can hear her whimpers through the stone walls. He doesn’t dare enter her room in the middle of the night, alone, but he calls out to her. She goes quiet, and he can feel the change in their heartbeat. She walks across the floor, the soft pad of her feet loud in the silent castle. Candlelight glows under the door, flickering and shifting as she sits on the other side. 

“Tell me a story, Merlin,” she says it like an order and he rubs his chest, the ache there so heavy he could nearly choke on it. He knows he could leave and no one would ever know. She’d never tell on him.

But he stays and tells her stories of Ealdor. They’re safe stories. They don’t involve magic or pain. He tells her about growing up in a small town and chasing frogs. He tells her about Will and practicing swords and how he’d always been awful at it. He tells her until he can feel her pulse slow into something steady, quiet in his own veins as their hearts harmonize in that gentle rhythm of sleep. He takes his lantern back to the small room he sleeps in.

The next day, Morgana is asking Gaius for a sleeping draught, but she thanks Merlin. Gaius asks why and Merlin pretends not to know, but he leaves flowers outside her doorway. Every few nights, he goes and tells her stories. And sometimes, she tells him stories as well. Stories about Gorlois and Vivien and riding horseback and learning weaponry and wearing armor. 

He knows he’ll always love her.

He thinks maybe she’ll love him. He almost tells her, but there’s always a new attack and always a new struggle and he’s never sure. And Gaius insists that she’d tell Uther of his magic and he’d die and his chest seizes tight at that thought. He wonders if she ever rubs her chest like he does, and wonder what’s happening on the other side of their connection.

He doesn’t realize it’s too late until Morgana’s eyes are filled with tears and she’s trembling in his arms. She’s begging him for help, for reassurance, and he can’t think through the pounding fear in his ears. Maybe she’s got magic, maybe she’s got Sight, maybe she’s known all along. He holds her and runs his hands through her hair and tells her it’ll be alright, but his secret has been a secret so long that it sticks in his mouth and refuses to come out.

The next morning her eyes are hard and her jaw is set and Merlin can feel their heartbeat like a drum in his chest. She searches for help elsewhere and when she looks to him, her eyes are far away. 

Merlin sends her flowers, and he listens to her stories, but they’re about Morgause and Druids and rebels. Merlin sees a war in her that he can’t abide. She mentions destiny and Merlin thinks of the dragon and he cringes away. Her destiny was to die, a thousand times already, but his destiny was to love her and protect Arthur and Merlin wasn’t sure he could do both.

Eventually he stops feeling the speeding pulse and frightened heart that calls him to her chambers for their stories and their talks. Months pass by and Morgana hides the bruises of chains on her wrists from Uther’s dungeons. Her eyes are dark and her tongue is sharp and Merlin feels more alone than ever. He should have told her, he should have ran away with her. They could have protected each other.

Morgause storms the castle, one day, and Morgana is afraid. he can see the fear in the tremble of her lips, in the confusion that creases her brow, in the unsure way she carries herself. It’s the first time she’s been unsure in front of him in months and he wonders what’s changed. But there’s a sickness in the air and an exhaustion in his bones and he can’t form the words to ask her without sounding like an accusation. 

The dragon tells Merlin she’s to die and Merlin doesn’t think that the dragon knows what that means. He can feel his heart beat slowing, fighting to keep track of hers, both of the pulses working together and breaking apart. He’s near to dying, but something in her is trying harder to hold on.

They’ll die anyway. Merlin can feel her heart stutter as his tries to slow down like everyone else’s. He can save Arthur, and Gaius, and Gwen. Or he can let them all die, and lose Morgana too. He thinks of Morgana’s stories of Morgause, of the only weakness she truly has, and it aches inside him because he knows, in the fuddled murky state of his mind, what he must do.

He thinks of what a still heart must look like as he pours the vial of poison into the water. When he takes it to her, watches her drink from the skin, he imagines his heart slowing with hers. He doesn’t dare look away from what he’s done, wants to remember his guilt even in the afterlife. 

She’s falling apart in his arms, flailing and fighting and he is trying to hold on because she has to calm down, because he has to explain. It’s not what he imagined dying to feel like. His heart is racing with her panic, their heartbeat pushing them faster and closer to death. He knows when the poison peaks, when her fear loses the battle. 

Morgause finds him slumped over her, neither of them dead but both of them dying, and she steals Morgana away.

Merlin wakes and knows that Morgana hates him and he doesn’t blame her. He looks in the mirror and he sees the guilt and he feels the steely beat of his heart, their heartbeat, going strong in his chest and he hates himself as well. He’d been wrong- so wrong- when he’d met her, but he’d been right as well. 

He’d always love her. 


End file.
